Economic justification of harvesting cereal crops of early ripeness phases by stripping and preparing feed from unthreshed ears

The stripping of grain allows organizing the separate harvesting of grain for feed in early phases and for food purposes in the phase of full ripeness. Purpose. To carry out the economic justification of the technology of harvesting early ripening grains by stripping without threshing and the technology of preparing pelleted fish feed for fish from unthreshed ears and additives. Methods. Economical estimation of the technology of winter wheat harvesting by stripping in early phases of ripeness without threshing and its processing into feed has been carried out by comparing operational and indicated expenses of the total technological operations. Scientific novelty lies in the joint estimation of the economic efficiency of technologies of harvesting and processing of grain crops. Results. The prime cost of harvesting cereals without threshing and separation is 2.65 times lower than that of the harvesting technology with combine threshing and separation. The cost of performing operations under the traditional (from grain) and the new (from ears) technologies of pelleted fish feed production is almost equal. However, the total cost of technological operations of harvesting grain without threshing and preparation of pelleted feed from unthreshed ears using the new technology is 24.3 % lower than that of traditional technology of harvesting with threshing and preparation of feed from grain. The use of non-grain part of ears of early ripeness in the composition of feed will increase the amount of raw material from hectare of sown area by 20–30 %. The proposed technologies is cost-effective and promising for implementation in the agricultural enterprises of southern Russia.